Nothing and Everything

Introduction

Good Morning, my name is Shawn, I am the family pastor here at first grace. If you would turn in your Bibles to 2 Corinthians 6, we will look at it in just a minute. If you don’t have a Bible, please feel free at any moment to grab one from our welcome desk, it is our gift to you.

Title: “Nothing and Everything”

Big Idea: You have Nothing and Everything so invest the grace of God, endure with virtue and open wide your hearts.

We are in 2 Corinthians, but this isn’t the only book where Paul discusses they way he approaches endurance as a Christian and as an apostle. The book of Philippians, I would argue, holds endurance as its central theme and I wanted to read a portion from the final chapter. This speaks to a mindset Paul clearly aimed to possess. We cannot necessarily change our circumstances simply by thinking positively. I don’t want to simply proclaim the power of positive thinking, however, how we think about our difficulties affects how we approach them. Sometimes, instead of simply listening to what our hearts are telling us, and allowing it to dictate how we feel. Sometimes, we must tell it what we ought to be thinking and feeling.

Philippians 4:4-9 Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice. 5 Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand; 6 do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. 7 And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. 8 Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. 9 What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me—practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you.

Rejoice always, even when you don’t want to. Be reasonable to everyone, even the ones who infuriate you the most. Be anxious for nothing, even your greatest insecurities. Don’t just let you heart tell your mind what to think, you tell it what to think. Think about things of value, things of character and virtue, remind it of the treasure you hold and the grace of God you have been given. This is how we endure in faith. I say this as someone struggling with this continually these days, the way we endure well with virtue, the way we see Paul able to do, is by dwelling on what is good and right. It is also how we keep our hearts open to one another even when things get hard and we want to shut them out.

Now, 2 Corinthians chapter 6.

2 Corinthians 6:1–13 (ESV) 1 Working together with him, then, we appeal to you not to receive the grace of God in vain. 2 For he says, “In a favorable time I listened to you, and in a day of salvation I have helped you.” Behold, now is the favorable time; behold, now is the day of salvation. 3 We put no obstacle in anyone’s way, so that no fault may be found with our ministry, 4 but as servants of God we commend ourselves in every way: by great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, 5 beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger; 6 by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, the Holy Spirit, genuine love; 7 by truthful speech, and the power of God; with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left; 8 through honor and dishonor, through slander and praise. We are treated as impostors, and yet are true; 9 as unknown, and yet well known; as dying, and behold, we live; as punished, and yet not killed; 10 as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, yet possessing everything. 11 We have spoken freely to you, Corinthians; our heart is wide open. 12 You are not restricted by us, but you are restricted in your own affections. 13 In return (I speak as to children) widen your hearts also.

Let’s Pray:

You have Nothing and Everything, so invest the grace of God, endure with virtue and open wide your hearts.

I have 3 points: First, invest the grace of God. Second, Endure with virtue. Third, Open wide your hearts

First, invest the grace of God

1 Working together with him, then, we appeal to you not to receive the grace of God in vain. 2 For he says, “In a favorable time I listened to you, and in a day of salvation I have helped you.” Behold, now is the favorable time; behold, now is the day of salvation. 3 We put no obstacle in anyone’s way, so that no fault may be found with our ministry,

Starting in verse 1, Paul exhorts the Corinthians to not have received the grace of God in vain. This passage has been confusing for many theologians and has often been co-opted to present particular theological preferences. As I understand it, the grace of God here is referring to the message of reconciliation Paul just mentioned at the end of chapter 5 saying, “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God,” and the grace of God that we would be fellow workers with him and his ambassadors. Our carrying of his message of reconciliation is a grace we all received. Paul is exhorting his readers to have not received it in vain. This isn’t the only place Paul does this. In Ephesians 3:7-8 he does something similar:

He says, “Of this gospel I was made a minister according to the gift of God’s grace, which was given me by the working of his power. 8 To me, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ,”

In the passage I just read, Paul is specifically referring to his particular calling to preach the gospel to the gentiles as a grace of God given to him.

Back in our passage, Paul continues in verse 2 with a quote from Isaiah 49:8 which says, “8 Thus says the Lord: ‘In a time of favor I have answered you; in a day of salvation I have helped you; I will keep you and give you as a covenant to the people, to establish the land, to apportion the desolate heritages.’ Paul clarifies with his commentary in the rest of the verse, now is the time of favor! Now is the day of salvation when the Lord has helped us! His point is this, if we have received the gospel of God’s grace, why hold it in vain? It is a treasure not intended to be hoarded, but invested.

While verse 3 seems to come out of left field, it is referring back to the beginning of verse 1 and their working together with Him for God. This is something Paul and his team were accomplishing without putting obstacles in anyone’s way. Again he is confident he and his team behaved with simplicity and godly sincerity. This doesn’t mean everyone would believe, but it simply means, if people didn’t believe, it wasn’t because Paul or those with him put the obstacles in their way.

What does all of this mean? I think there is a primary meaning and a couple of implications.

First, I want to remind you of the Parable of the Talents

In this parable from Matthew 25, Jesus compares the kingdom of Heaven to a man who was going to go on a journey. In preparation, he called his servants and gave them each different amounts 5, 2, and 1 talent (which is a large amount of gold) for them respectively according to each of their abilities. The one who received 5 and the one who received 2 both took a risk and traded with it and doubled their investment. The one who had received 1, however, out of fear, took it and buried it. When the man returned from his journey, he approached the three servants to settle accounts. They each presented what they had earned to the man and was rewarded accordingly. To the first two, the one who was given 5 and the one who was given 2 he said this, “Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.” The final servant, however, had nothing but the original talent to bring. He was rebuked, his talent was taken away, given to another, and he was cast out.

With this in mind, the primary meaning of our passage is obvious, He says, don’t have received the grace of God, that is the message of reconciliation, in vain. To use a nerdy illustration: We should not be holding the treasure of the gospel like Smaug (the dragon) hoarded the dwarf gold in the Hobbit. Keeping it to ourselves like a treasure we are dishing out to those we find worthy. We should not be resting on it like a dragon in his den, but we should instead spread it far and wide, investing it! As Paul says, Now is the time of God’s favor! Now is the day of salvation! How can we hold it back?! Every generation needs to hear the good news about what Jesus has done. Christianity is always one generation from extinction. Who will believe if he does not hear? How will he hear if no one speaks? Who will speak if no one is sent?

So let me ask, are you holding the grace of God in vain? Out of fear, are you hoarding it to yourself, or are you investing it in others? I we don’t all have the gift of evangelism. In this the questions is not, how many people you are leading to Christ, but how are you investing what he has entrusted to you? You have been given the gospel, which is the power of God for salvation, you have been given the Holy Spirit of God, and you have been gifted accordingly, are you utilizing that gifting so that the work of ministry might build up the body of Christ?

Now, two implications:

The first implication is this, how we communicate the good news matters. We cannot put obstacles and stumbling blocks before people in this process. The main obstacle I want to mention is lacking in love and affection toward one another, since our love for one another is what Jesus said would mark his church out.

Sometimes it will happen because churches are made up of fallible people who make mistakes and we have an enemy doing everything he can to thwart our every endeavor to make disciples. Regardless, even though we know we will make mistakes, we should be doing everything we can to “walk in a manner worth of the calling to which [we] have been called with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” This sort of unity is built upon love and humility.

Unfortunately we don’t always get this right. Sometimes, no matter what we do, things go sideways and people get hurt. We fail to love one another well, we act or react in our pride instead of in the humility we know we ought. When this happens, we should repent. Confess your sins to one another and you will find healing. If we Confess our sins and he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. So we should Repent and endeavor to walk in humility and love toward one another.

There is a sense in which we need to walk in holiness too, I don’t want to down play that, but we are each at a different point in our sanctification and we are all utterly reliant upon Jesus for our holiness. It does not matter how good of a person you are, you are not holy in and of your self and you never could be, but because of Jesus you are holy no matter what mistakes you make.

With this I would caution you with the warmings of Jesus: Beware the leaven of the Pharisees and the Sadducees. To overly simplify it, one pursues holiness at the cost of mercy, the other pursues mercy at the cost of holiness. Both lead to stumbling blocks of different kinds, and both can lead us to carry the message of reconciliation in vain, refusing to invest it in others. If you fall into these mistakes as we all do from time to time, repent, believe in Jesus, then go and sin no more.

The second implication is this, reject your fear. We cannot be a people driven and controlled by fear. If we let fear constrain and control our behavior, we are no longer driven and constrained by the love of Christ as we ought. Fear is what led the servant in the parable to bury the talent he was given.

You have Nothing and Everything, so invest the grace of God, endure with virtue and open wide your hearts.

First, invest the grace of God, second, Endure with virtue

4 but as servants of God we commend ourselves in every way: by great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, 5 beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger; 6 by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, the Holy Spirit, genuine love; 7 by truthful speech, and the power of God; with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left; 8 through honor and dishonor, through slander and praise. We are treated as impostors, and yet are true; 9 as unknown, and yet well known; as dying, and behold, we live; as punished, and yet not killed; 10 as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, yet possessing everything.

As we saw in verse 3, Paul and is team did not put up obstacles between people and the gospel, they did their best to proceed in their ministry without fault. This didn’t mean everyone liked them, or that they necessarily, approved of them. However, this does mean Paul can proceed with a clear conscience and, as servants of God, can commend themselves, he says, in every way. However, he is not commending himself in word only, but in deed. He begins to outline is experience as an apostle and ambassador of Christ he says:

They were commended by endurance in these things: afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, and hunger.

These are a lot to endure. I look at this and I find it personally humbling. If I can say there is one area he mentions I can actually relate to it is hardships. I have experienced it and I have endured, but I’m pretty sure I have complained the whole time, I’m not sure, you would have to ask my wife. I look back in my journal and I see “help” in my prayers over and over with my complaints about my circumstances. I look at Paul, though, he endured so many more categories of difficulty to which I could never fully relate.

At the same time, they were commended by their virtue. That is my word, not his. He lists, he is commended: by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, the Holy Spirit, genuine love, truthful speech, and the power of God.

These are positive qualities they posess which spoke on their behalf .

Third, they were commended by Having nothing, yet possessing everything. He lists a series of 10 items:

He begins by mentioning their Bearing balanced weaponry in their left hand and their right. This could be a simple and independent comment, but I found myself drawn to the following list of counterbalancing ideas:

through honor and dishonor, through slander and praise, treated as impostors and yet are true, treated as unknown and yet were well known, they were punished, but not killed; sorrowful, but always rejoicing; poor, yet making many rich with the treasure of the gospel the message of reconciliation; as having nothing, yet possessing everything.

There are a couple of things we can draw out of this passage, I will start with the second:

Paul says they had Nothing and Everything. It is this last which hit me hardest. It speaks to the truest beauty and wonder of Paul’s ministry, and ours. There is no way he was perfect, but he had the right perspective about what was important. He gave up it all. Everything he had once valued he counted it as loss for the sake of knowing Christ and the power of his resurrection. He endured what seemed like everything imaginable save death (though that would come later) and all the while retained a character and virtue which glorified Christ in the process. He walked in genuine love even while he boldly proclaimed the truth and displayed the power of God. He seemed to hold both the wonder and the horror in equal shares, knowing this life is not what what was of greatest worth, but the treasure he possessed ensured that this light and momentary affliction would make way for and eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison.

I want to pause here and make the quick point. By grace, through faith, we are offered eternal life through Jesus Christ. He lived the life we all should live, and died the death we deserve on the cross. We are called to simply put our faith in him and we will be saved. However, I think as Christians we forget what that means. It means we are giving up everything. Repentance for the sinner is giving up everything in the hopes of receiving everything. We come to him with nothing, and he replaces it all with everything of eternal value. Think of the parable of the man who found a treasure in a field, went home sold everything he owned and bought the field.

Sometimes I think we forget, especially me, that we walk with world with nothing, and yet in Christ we have everything.

Second, Paul and his team endured great hardships with commendable virtue. Paul previously appealed to the judgment of God himself, and to the consciences of the Corinthians as is witnesses for this. I wish I could say I have done the same. Yet, Paul, in his ministry walked in a fashion which displayed the love of Christ and the power of God by the Holy Spirit. He did not surrender his character in order to get what he wanted or to achieve a goal. Can we all say we’ve done the same?

How do you pursue your goals? Is your Character a testimony to your faith? No, we will not do everything perfectly, but how we approach the things we do matters. This brings me back to Philippians 4, which I read for you earlier. How do we make sure we are enduring with virtue? By thinking about it. By intentionally occupying our thoughts on those things.

8 Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.

Take time to think about these things. Maybe even consider memorizing this verse. How we think about things tends to have a strong effect on how we see them, what if we could intentionally change the lens through which we viewed the world? I imagine it would make it easier to be thankful always and for everything.

You have Nothing and Everything, so invest the grace of God, endure with virtue and open wide your hearts.

First, invest the grace of God. Second, Endure with virtue. Third, Open wide your hearts

11 We have spoken freely to you, Corinthians; our heart is wide open. 12 You are not restricted by us, but you are restricted in your own affections. 13 In return (I speak as to children) widen your hearts also.

In this last part of this passage Paul is appealing to the Corinthians not to restrict their affections toward the apostle and his team. As Paul says, he has opened up his heart wide toward them and wished for them to do the same.

I have to admit, this is absolutely astounding to me. I struggle to do this myself. It is hard to open you heart to people especially if you have been hurt. It is hard not to hold some back, to keep some pieces closed off and protected. Yet, Paul, who has endured much more than I could imagine, was still keeping his heart wide open to a people who had hurt him.

Keeping this very simple and to the point. What about you? What about me? Are willing to do the same? We have been through a lot. We live in a difficult world, we have endured difficulties. We have received hurts and picked up various injuries. Are we willing to open up our hearts to one another? Are we still willing to express our affection toward one another?

For those here who are not Christians, would you open your hearts to Christ? He has already demonstrated his love for you that while you were still a sinner, he died for you.

Christian, that same love and affection was showered upon you and your brothers and sisters, work on your own heart toward them, that you might show the same sort of affection to his glory.

Conclusion

You have Nothing and Everything, so invest the grace of God, endure with virtue and open wide your hearts.

In Christ, we gave up everything to be with him. In return, we gained everything. This is the grace of God given us in the gospel of Jesus Christ by the grace of God. It is a treasure to be invested in the people already know and love. Yet we hold this treasure in jars of clay and will have to endure faithful through various circumstances. Let us think about what is good that we might endure faithfully with virtue and good character. Then, as Christ’s beloved, let us open our hearts to one another in affectionate love, the kind of love Christ displayed for us when he died for us.

Lets Pray:

Our Father, work in our hearts that we might think about what is true, what is honorable, what is just and pure, what is lovely and commendable. Help us to think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise. We find all of those things in you. Work in us to rejoice in you always, and to be thankful at all time that you peace might be on display in us. Help us to endure faithfully with good character and virtue and to love one another the way you have loved us. If there are any here who have not believed, please work in their hearts to draw them near to you in repentance and faith. Show us all your love and comfort us as we go.

Announcements

Church family meeting tomorrow night at 7. Come full of affection and patience as we consider what is next for our church.

Small Groups start this week. See the sign up sheet at the welcome desk for info, or scan the QR code to sign up in our app

Harvest Festival : Sunday October 13th, 4-6:30 here at the church. Bring your favorite soup or chili!

Youth Group here at the church on Wednesday nights at 6:30

Prayer Meeting, the last Sunday evening of the month

Prayer

as you go knowing that while You came with nothing, you have gained Everything, so invest this grace of God, endure with virtue and open wide your hearts.